Part of the reason that people liked this show so much was because they could often relate to the family. With this being said, I feel like I can relate sooo much to this family. I come from a middle-lower class family with two brothers and two sisters and we would raise hell in our household and schools. Some of the ages even match up pretty well and I can see certain connections between various characters and me and my siblings. My mother is even a domineering figure who screamed all the time and handled most of the discipline.
Obviously, the show is much more exaggerated than my life, but the similarities are uncanny. I'm just curious if anybody else feels like this. And if so, doesn't it make you love this show so much more? Or maybe I'm just blinded and all the fans feel this way. Your thoughts?
Great Topic!
I completely feel like you. My family is not "poor" we have food to eat, and my parents both work, but we are by no means rich, lower middle class, almost a overlooked group IMO. While I am the only boy in my family, I have cousins that acted quite similar to Reese and Dewey (a comparison my sister always made was that Dewey was exactly like my cousin, he even looks uncannily similar to him. And Francis.........he reminds me of a few people, namely my best friend's older brother, and my sister's new fiancee. I am not a middle child, but can relate to and feel like Malcolm in so many ways, except while I am smart, I was never a school genius and most of my problems come from a different source (read my intro post if you want to know), but like him I never really fit in despite my attempts to. I love the stuff he goes through, and sometimes his reactions to things and to other people make me just go "yep, that's exactly what I would do/did" I'll be honest, I even probably moaned and complain as much as he does too
If anything I'm more of a combination of Malcolm/Francis then anything. Though the "Francis" part of me has tamed a bit in the past few years
In terms of parents, my mother isn't really exactly like Lois, but i feel I have not exactly a 100% positive relationship with her all the time, if anything the relationship I can relate to the most is between Lois and Francis............ya.........it's kinda like that I'll just say (the screaming, yelling, butting of heads...........yep, sums it up pretty well
) The episode "Hal's birthday" is a perfect example of how those things generally go down (went down) in my household.
Hal is a unique character in a way that he reminds me so much of my own father in that he is genuine, and genuinely tries, even though he doesn't always do it perfectly right but who does. My father doesn't like his job very much, never really intended to do it, but above all loves his kids more then just about anything. Some of the stuff Hal does is really over the top, but does remind me a bit of the stuff my dad would do/did. He has never danced around in his underwear, or built a killer robot, but he has one a single game of chess against me (with my help), let us eat crap when he watched us, and covertly kind of undermined my mother by picking me up once when I ran off once (A la "Francis escapes, though not exactly the same situation). Hal reminds me so much of the positive aspects of my real father, and some of his negatives (doesn't exactly wear the pants, bit of a wuss
, not the most comfortable being authoritative), it is probably why he is my favorite character of them all.
The connections I feel to the characters is what sets this show for me apart from most other's I've watched, and why for me it will probably never get old or stale, no matter how many times I watch it.
